Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

zeazzz writes to mention that the folks over at UMPC have a very cool little writeup and pictorial of a user's latest wearable PC. With the surge in smart phone adoption it seems that enthusiasm for wearable computers has dropped off a bit, which is too bad. I certainly look forward to my augmented reality HUD instead of depending on my iPhone for everything. "Essentially he took the MyVu headset, removed one of the eye pieces, and mounted the other to his glasses to that he could see his surroundings and the UX's screen at the same time. The MyVu is attached to the UX through the A/V output port on the UX's port replicator dongle. With some additional addons he provided his UX with extra battery life via an external battery, and several input methods to communicate with the UX while the rest of the kit resides within the backpack."

What I want to find is a setup that hooks up to both a long infrared (thermal imaging) and a short infrared (night vision) cameras, and overlays the images on reality through the glasses.

Imagine being able to not only see in the dark, but see the heat signatures from things.

My dad experimented with long infrared with the Army in the 60's and 70's. In some of the books that he had published, he demonstrated interesting things. The equipment was huge and static. He'd set up for a shot, take the picture, and then process it. At best, you were looking at hours to see the result. You could see a residual handprint on the wall, inefficiencies of insulation, etc.

Imagine seeing a real time feed overlaid over the world. Amazingly useful things would be seeing hotspots in a house, caused by overloaded power circuits or inefficient insulation. You may be able to see where someone had walked before you (temp changes in the footprints), touched items such as door knobs. Fire rescue would be able to see through smoke, take extra precautions on very hot doors, and very likely save more lives. Police could search darkened areas with ease, and avoid hostile suspects jumping out from the shadows. In every day use, you could see long distances ahead when you are driving at night, and even spot when someone you're talking to is lying.

It could open up a whole new world for us.

The idea wouldn't be very hard. You should be able to run a pair of fiber optic cables from the edge of a pair of glasses down to the cameras. A very small PC should be able to overlay the images in real time, and then display them through something resembling the glasses shown. I've been watching for cameras that are small enough, and are affordable. I have yet to find the kind of gear that I could afford.:(

An extra overlay of other data could be useful too, without causing an information overload. The time, ambient temperature, some GPS data (heading, speed, altitude). Things that you'd see on TV are a bit fanciful right now, such as threat detection. Determining a car is on an intercept path and may cause an impact is a bit beyond what a portable PC can do, but a human can determine it quickly by seeing it.

For fire/rescue and law enforcement, I would see it being amazingly useful to transmit that data back to a central location. Where or what happened? It would all be available.

I know a lot of people hate cops, but a lot of them are actually doing something very useful for our protection. We simply don't see it all the time, because most of our interaction is with traffic cops who may or may not be right, but they'll write the ticket anyways.

Seems like it wouldn't be difficult to tie that to the output of the Fluke Ti25 - that thermal imager already can internally blend standard visual wavelengths to IR. It would be a bit bigger than I'd want, and expensive, but the tech seems to be already out there to do something similar to what you're suggesting. I've found having a thermal imager is very, very useful to have around - I could only imagine how nice it'd be to have a agumented reality HUD with one integrated. Great idea!

That does look to be around the right size to start working with though. I'm sure the handle and some of the plastic are extra. They're usually pretty good about making sure their equipment can handle folks bouncing them off the floor.:)

The pictures on your site are great. They're a good sampling of thermal imaging, for those who haven't played with it. I'd love to be able to see the world like that as a 50% opacity overlay.

Over 10 years ago I saw a project that did truly interest me: transparent glasses that project the computer's output directly on your retina, using fighter jet technology. No idea what happened to that, but I won't be happy with anything less than that.

The problem with the setup from TFA is that, while a tiny screen hanging in front of your glasses might look very cool and cyberpunky, it's not terribly practical. It does block part of your vision, and it doesn't really overlay the computer output over your

Back in the day, I had seen a hack for the old Sony Glasman visor. You could remove the front shield, and the back of the LCD. LCD's are inherently transparent. They have a coating on the back so they are opaque, usually reflecting light from a source like a small fluorescent tube. Something like that would seem to be almost perfect. From what I read, it worked really well, but I'd wonder how the focal length worked out. It would seem your eyes would be adjusting back and forth constant

The possibilities are endless. I have a terrible memory, so I'm always looking for ways to help with that. Facial recognition software could identify someone you're talking to. Information about them could be displayed to you, like birthdays, wife/kids names, notes you've taken in the past, etc. Whatever you look at (using eye tracking) could do an information lookup and display all sorts of information, or whisper it in your ear.

The computer could listen to your conversations and pick out and remember

For the storage, I would say that storing it back to a server would be the more advantageous route. It would suck if you were to trip and fall, or say get hit (but not killed) by a car. Your stored history would disappear.

What would be better, assuming there's anyone you could trust, would be to have a communal pool of information. Say you and I were friends, and you met someone. It could tell me what I needed to know on demand about the friend.

And I would like to see someone hack one. LOL. Can you imagine walking down the street and seeing some guy suddenly freak out because his wearable computer started blaring music and showing totse images?

I think contact lenses make a lot more sense. Then you could remove them. They'd be a lot easier to upgrade as well. I don't see any reason they couldn't have their circuitry embedded in them off near the edge, and have power beamed in.

Contact lenses might make a lot of sense as targets for a vision system like the one described in Snow Crash. Perhaps if you integrated some MEMS components into them they could contain a scanning mirror set, even, and perform a sort of DLP-esque function.

If I'm getting an eye implant, I want a lot more than a HUD. I expect telescopic vision via electrowetting lenses.

That won't work...try to focus on your contact lens...or more likely, some bit of dirt or smudge on it. You can't; there needs to be a bit of distance between the lens and the thing you're trying to optically perceive.

There only needs to be distance because your eye's lens has a minimum focal length. As long as you can arrange for the light to enter the lens *as if* it comes from some distance away, it doesn't actually need to do so. That's easier said than done, mind you.

I haven't seen it. Where I live, "high-speed" internet means "can't stream shit". And there's no TV reception. And I refuse to get Cable or Satellite TV. I'll see it eventually, I suppose. I've been thinking about augmented reality for a real long time, even before I read Snow Crash... which was a long time ago too. I guess I started thinking about how to do it shortly after seeing Terminator as a tween or so, but I didn't have any useful thoughts on it until much later, when I saw adverts for the Sony Glas

Well, like I said, contacts beat glasses hands down, but implants are even better. Contacts require maintenance, implants don't. It's really REALLY nice to be able to get out of bed and SEE without messing with contacts or worse, putting glasses on.

If I'm getting an eye implant, I want a lot more than a HUD. I expect telescopic vision via electrowetting lenses.

That will likely come before implanted HUDs. My implant already gives me better than 20/20 vision at all distances, although some people only have 20

Normally I don't respond to ACs in my "new messages" list but I'll make an exception to clear up misunderstanding that others may take for gospel. What you say is true with LASIK, but not an implant. You become farsighted (presbyopia) in middle age because your focusing lens gets too hard for the eye's muscles to move, but the implant replaces that lens. The new accomodating lens I have implanted is on struts and moveable by the eye's focusing muscles.

Smartphones are not really wearable computers for two reasons. First, they don't really count because, in general, you have to hold them during use, rather than actually wearing them. Second, they are not "wearable computers" in the sense that people with pacemakers or cochlear implants aren't "cyborgs": That is, they actually are; but they aren't what people imagine when they say so, so we don't really consider them to be.

He has a computer in his backpack and wears a headset. Compare with someone with a phone in their pocket, and wearing a bluetooth headset. I don't think even of them count as wearable computers. Yes, he's wearing a headset, and people talk about wearing bluetooth headsets with their phones too.

He has a computer in his backpack and wears a headset. Compare with someone with a phone in their pocket, and wearing a bluetooth headset. I don't think even of them count as wearable computers. Yes, he's wearing a headset, and people talk about wearing bluetooth headsets with their phones too.

The computer's output is definitely wearable. The big question is the input. Do you need to get your smartphone out to type stufff? Does it have voice recognition? Do you have an input device in your pocket that you can use without looking at it? Does it track your eye movement?

Ideally it has both audible and visible wearable output, and several types of wearable input. But with even one type of practical output and one type of practical input, it'd count as a wearable computer in my book.

Do you need to get your smartphone out to type stufff? Does it have voice recognition? Do you have an input device in your pocket that you can use without looking at it? Does it track your eye movement?

The phone's output is wearable. Not anywhere as useful due to it being audio only, sure, but we don't define computing by the presence of a screen. Some phones have voice recognition.

That'd count as wearable for me. If you can use it while wearing it, that is without having to dedicate hands to it, then it's wearable IMO. A smart phone that allows you to use its full computer-like functionality through voice control would fit my definition of a wearable computer.

If you can only make phone calls, it might be a wearable phone, but that's not nearly as interesting.

With the iPhone, there are apparently more apps that use voice control. I haven't tried it, but if you can open those apps thro

in the sense that people with pacemakers or cochlear implants aren't "cyborgs"

One of my friends has a pacemaker and I totally think that she's a cyborg. She doesn't deny it -- sometimes she even gets this look in her eye, you know, one of those "one day we're going to rise up and kill all of you meat-only people" looks.

It's hard to draw the line between basic humans and cyborgs, but I'd say that, at the very least, if you are reliant on some kind of electronic tech bound to or inside your body to survive (she'd die if she didn't have the pacemaker), then you're a cyborg.

in the sense that people with pacemakers or cochlear implants aren't "cyborgs": That is, they actually are; but they aren't what people imagine when they say so, so we don't really consider them to be.

Incidentally, a cochlear implants was one of the "powers" of the 6 million dollar woman.

OK, the bluetooth headset seems to be winning out over the HUD as the main UI device. Other than that, how is a smartphone not a wearable computer?

Wearable computers are supposed to make you look like a clumsy ass when using them. Smart phones typically don't unless you use a bluetooth headset.

Honestly, I think the conceit is a holdover of older technology where you ended up looking borgified with all the hardware you had strapped to your body. You used to have to wear heavy-duty batteries strapped to your waist, a funky keyboard strapped to your arm, doofy goggles, and the computer itself was on your back. Heady stuff for people who were used to computers having to be plugged into walls but this was even before laptops became practical, when luggables were still the latest and hottest shit.

The iPhone is pretty much representing the ideal of the Tricorder or the PADD from Star Trek. Pretty screen, touch interface, wireless everything, sound and video, cool stuff! The only way it could get any better is if you didn't even need to hold anything in your hands (or pay out the ass for the data plan). That'd be an ear piece that tucks away invisibly in your ear like a hearing aid, bone induction microphone imbedded inside the earpiece, and a display that either sits on contact lenses in your eyes or would be built into your glasses and either projects information onto the glass or shoots it onto your retina with low-powered lasers. Where would the computer be? Maybe still clipped to your hip like an iphone feeding data via wireless, or maybe it'll be small enough to be built into the hearing aid or contact lenses.

What's the ultimate UI goal? Terminator vision. Integrated lowlight vision, thermal vision, object tagging like a fighter plane's HUD, etc. The early concepts were mocked up for military maintenance crews, you could watch a video showing you what you're supposed to do as you do it.

Yes, what you said, and, for the love of Christ, a way to "talk" without having a one-sided conversation with the freaking air. I hate that. Fifteen years ago you would have been sent to the loony bin for talking to voices in your head. Now, we assume one half of a bluetooth-enabled conversation. Seriously, how many completely, balls-out fucking crazy people are walking the streets who we assume are on the phone?

Yes, what you said, and, for the love of Christ, a way to "talk" without having a one-sided conversation with the freaking air. I hate that. Fifteen years ago you would have been sent to the loony bin for talking to voices in your head. Now, we assume one half of a bluetooth-enabled conversation. Seriously, how many completely, balls-out fucking crazy people are walking the streets who we assume are on the phone?

Why is that a problem? Suddenly crazies can pretend to be normal well-adjusted members of society too. Isn't that great?

I'm probably taking this too literally, but you don't get taken to the "loony bin" for talking to voices in your head. You're left to rot on the streets. So back in the day, we might have given the poor bastards a funny look--now we can completely ignore them. That's progress!

Which was pretty inexplicable in the context of the Terminator. The visual processing system derived information about the environment, then integrated it as text into the signal from which it was derived such that it had to be processed a second time to be acted upon?

Which was pretty inexplicable in the context of the Terminator. The visual processing system derived information about the environment, then integrated it as text into the signal from which it was derived such that it had to be processed a second time to be acted upon?

For the benefit of the audience. I can forgive it for Terminator. Less easy to gloss over is something like the original Battlestar Gaalactica with robots sitting inside starfighters flying it manually -- even better, communicating via vibrating the atmosphere. Now some will say "The dialog is just for the benefit of the audience, who wants to watch computers bleeping at each other with subtitles?" And to that I would say embrace the alien otherness of machines. Don't explain their motivation, leave it as s

Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.

Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.

I appreciate your point, but would like to clarify something - it's not just "stupid children" and "stupid parents" that get into accidents because of distracting new toys. I'm fairly certain that "very smart" people also get distracted.

Unless you simply want to say that everyone that allows themselves to be distracted by "new toys" while driving is stupid. I could go along with that. It's more of a conscious decision sort of stupidity than a ignorance or intellectual issue. Very, very smart and intelle

Unless you simply want to say that everyone that allows themselves to be distracted by "new toys" while driving is stupid. I could go along with that. It's more of a conscious decision sort of stupidity than a ignorance or intellectual issue. Very, very smart and intellectual people can be extremely stupid.

Allowing unnecessary distractions during driving is definitely stupid. And yes, being very intellectual doesn't stop you from being stupid. You can be very informed about all sorts of interesting stuff that's completely irrelevant to your current activity, and completely ignorant about what's important right now (keeping your attention on the road, rather than elsewhere).

The big idea behind augmented reality is that it should assist you in your current activity, rather than distract you with irrelevant stuff. Consider fighter pilots who get extra visual input about their own speed and direction, and data about possible threats and targets on their HUD display.

Now translate that to your car: you'd get a good impression of how fast you're going (and if you're over the speed limit) without looking at the dashboard, you can get an extra warning if there's traffic in a place you

I've spent a lot of time as an admin for some fairly large companies. One thing I noticed is that a lot of people who aren't into CAD, programming or graphics design, don't like resolutions above 1024x768. I've lost count of the times I've set shiny new LCD monitors to their spec res like 1280x1024 only to have people change the res back down. The fonts are too small. If you change the font sizes, programs start to look weird, so they change the res.

Because all the resolution and associated benefits go to waste because there is no graceful way for the fonts to be bigger, but not fsck-up the interface. Or, if there is, it takes so much effort most people won't do it.

For mobile devices, I don't see it's bad, unless you plan on lugging a massive screen around with you? It's only a pain because so many stupid websites/applications/operating systems assume you're running at least 1024x768, and they've yet to catch up with the wide availability of Internet phones and netbooks.

Realize that you're dealing with a display that is inches from your eye instead of half a foot to a foot. 640x480 on less than 3" is heaps more resolution than what you get with a current 22" 4000something by 3000something monitor.

Mmmmm...not really. 640x480 still amounts to a small amount of real estate. It works on a 5" diagonal display, but I'm not sure how well it'll translate to the 45" display image of an HMD.

Still, there is a lot of potential. It wasn't until recently that we had a decent COMPUTING platform with a screen that size. The iPhone and other smart phones/PDAs have introduced something that could be very interesting. Prior to their arrival nothing was really that size except for video. Now...

Of course, but 640x480 on 3" diagonal? We'd have to calculate the pixels per inch and compare it to ordinary TFT screens, then adjust for the distance to your eyes. Maybe a "pixels per degree (angular)" would be interesting to see, to decide whether the pixels on a TFT or a HMD would "feel" bigger.

This is just pointless narcissism. There's no demand for this sort of thing currently. Instead of furiously wanking while trying to stand out from the crowd by wearing highly visible equipment, these guys should be finding a niche where mobile computing makes sense. It's about as relevant as top-secret super plans for that great treehouse hideout I'm going to build. Sure, it's fun to talk about, but is it stuff that matters?

As far as demand goes...I demand to own one of these...I mean really, the concept is just awesome, I can level up characters in all my favourite games while driving to work! Heck, I could play GTA while driving to work (as long as I don't mix up which eye is the game). What could possibly go wrong?

Instead of furiously wanking while trying to stand out from the crowd by wearing highly visible equipment, these guys should be finding a niche where mobile computing makes sense.

-Anybody working in a factory or a warehouse, where nobody cares how you look.-Field service techs that need access to a ton of reference data.-Anybody that climbs up a telephone pole or down a manhole.-Anybody who needs use of both hands and access to information simultaneously to better do their jobs.

It's not exactly a "niche" market. Designing a wearable eyescreen that doesn't suck will be worth a ton of money.

It'll certainly start off as a niche. That's good, niches are usually quite profitable. Your first three cases, I'd say an eyepiece would be too expensive for the work they do. The fourth, however, is spot on and figuring out where that case makes sense is the key to the future of wearable computers.

What's NOT the future of wearable computers is some dorks putting on an eyepiece in a bid to make everyone look at them. Narcissism is bad, mmmkay?

No, it's called "a difference of opinion." It's absolutely flabbergasting how intolerant people are of diverse opinions these days. How about, "I disagree with you, and here's why" instead of mere assertions followed by insulting invective?

It seems to me like the real killer app for a HUD is when you can have augmented reality [youtube.com] built into your normal glasses. It would normally require a transparent screen, though, or a virtually transparent screen (by mounting a camera on the HUD which shows you what is in the field of vision being blocked by the display.

Of course, there's some danger there, too. No doubt some dumbass would use that sort of thing while driving, only to have the "augmented reality" block his vision of real reality, thereby c

At least for what I have in mind for a personal project. I haven't been able to find a decent optical see-through HMD that is affordable for regular people.

Liteye [liteye.com] makes a system for the military, but this seems like a rather limited system.

I wouldn't mind seeing an OLED system in this form factor [3m.com]. They're quite sturdy, allowing you to mount decent loads onto it, the bridge and resting pads are quite big making them rather comfortable even with a big load on them. The stems are wide allowing big mounting points for stuff like camera(s) and wires. Connect it to something like an nVidia Tegra [youtube.com] and you'd have an optical see through display, head mounted cameras and a small computer that can handle augmented reality with apparent ease.

But I suspect I'd be better off hoping to see Megan Fox splayed across my bed.

Well, my friend... I have planned such a device for a loong time now. Technically, it's completely possible.Give me an investor, and I'll sell you such a thing in some years.

Until now, their excuses mostly are the circular reasoning fallacy, that nobody would use or buy it because there are no applications or anything for it. (And there are no applications, because no device for it exists, of course.) So it's "too risky", with "no chance" to make a profit from it.Stupid, stupid, stupid!But imagine such stup

there used to be a commercial on the boob tube in the 90s where a guy was in the middle of some courtyard and he was jumping up and down yelling buy! buy! sell! into his headset with an eyepiece screen and a small computer on his belt. I was just reading some news on Motorola doing Android phones and it made me wonder why we are not seeing devices like what that commercial showed. When an ARM chip and do 720P HD video in just a few watts, one would think that driving a tiny transparent display screen and do

I was reminded of that same commercial. I think I saw it maybe 2 or 3 times, never to hear of it again. Either it was a real load of vaporware or it contained one of the best HMDs I've ever seen, tacked/glued to glasses, along the bottom edge, with the rim doubling as the cable canal. One of the gags of the commercial was that you simply did not see that the person was wearing a wearable, thus seemingly yelling "buy!" and "sell!" until you saw that he is watching a ticker on the bottom of his glasses.

Xybernaut did this back in the 90s with a monocle hud, voice recognition, and a wearable cpu. It was underpowered, but saw some demand in the manufacturing and maintenance fields. I always thought it was a good idea and hoped it would go mainstream. Sony even threatened to make a 'ComputeMan' with the tech. I would have to agree that there's not enough demand and or it's too geeky.

The iPhone or a smart phone of some sort is just the beginning of a wearable pc, it's a component in the mess. Bluetooth and other wireless technologies need to further develop and better batteries. No component except the central unit should be bigger than a bluetooth headset. Until they get that far its never going to catch on.

We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first reasonable wearable computer.

The thought of signs and arrows on my glasses or beamed directly into my retina doesn't sound like an improvement to me. It sounds more like purposefully giving myself a cataracts. Augmenting the way I see the world by improving my mind would be a much better thing.